Pelican Lake 7/28

[fishnate]

With the rotenone project looming this fall, I've been trying to fish Pelican a few last times. I went out with a friend last Saturday and we launched before sunup into some form of pea soup. The water is quite low but there was still plenty of ramp for the 20' Lund. We hoped to have a good early morning topwater bite with frogs, but as we motored over to the NE side we found the water clarity to be about 6" max and the reed edge was only about 3' deep. Coontail and pondweed made things difficult to run the trolling motor through so after 30 minutes of fruitless fishing and frustration, we worked our way out to the deeper 5' to 6' weed edge where we could maneuver better and the water was a little cleaner with 12" visibility. I tried popping frogs, spinnerbaits and lipless cranks with no hits. We found bluegill and small bass able to see and hit small chartreuse and pink jigs tipped with worms. After the sun got a little higher we went over to some offshore reed beds to try throwing frogs again. Nothing! In frustration, we motored right out in the middle where we found water with about 18" visibility and 9' depths right where we like to ice fish. The wind had picked up to about 8-10 mph from the east so we just drifted west and fished until the depth got too shallow and the weeds got too thick to fish through. I put on a Texas rigged Zoom 10.5" black grape worm and just threw it out behind the boat and proceeded to catch about 15 bass from 10" to 15" with most in the 13" to 14" range, typical. My friend got about 10 bass drifting a Texas rigged Senko. We also ended up with roughly 40 to 45 bluegill between us. We did that until the wind died and the heat increased about 11:30 then we got off the water.

We were the last of about 6 or 7 boats off the water that morning. Didn't hear or see too much excitement from anyone else. Didn't get bugged by any bugs either. Not a great day, but not too bad either since we figured them out and didn't get a skunkin.
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[catchnfish]

Glad you figured them out and caught a few. I'm headed up to pelican later next week for a few days, figured i better get a few more trips in before they kill it off.
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